God moved almost immediately after our altercation. I did not know where he moved to. Nobody was willing to tell me that bit. I found out eventually, but that's not relevant to this part. I was only told that he moved, presumably to get away from me, or the people I knew who could make him tremble.
I did not move. I lived in my grandfathers home with the knowledge that he knew I was there, and that he knew I was aware of that semi dangerous fact. He left me alone anyways, and through the whispers I was told enough to be fairly confident that he was set on continuing on without paying mind to me or my endeavors.
Because of this, I was not afraid anymore. I had been through several cycles of fear since meeting him when I was a teenager. Years of fear had followed me, but after finally being rid of his presence, I was no longer scared. I'd surpassed him in my life, finally.
It helped that it was just me. I didn't have Whaya. I didn't have close personal friends, although my acquaintances were ever growing in number and I viewed the potential of friendship as something to ponder as I went into the future. I was aware though that there weren't people he could use to hurt me anymore. They were all gone. It was just me, and I could handle myself.
And then Riley came along.
I did not fall in love with Riley. I was just simply in love with him. There was no falling. It happened quickly and without warning, like a flicker of the lights on and off. He was a shattering force. His laughter alone made my heart beat speed up so quickly I thought I'd simply go into cardiac arrest. He was just so insanely and aggressively perfect.
Actually, he was kind of a mess. It would have been impossible not to notice that part of him. He was a disaster with every step he took. I could practically feel the world shake around him in trepidation every time he walked into a room.
Riley was a drug addict with an affection for schedule II opiates. Riley was at least partially infatuated with his heterosexual roommate. Riley was regularly suicidal and talked openly about how stopping to get a happy meal from McDonald's on the way was part of his self destruction plan. These were things I learned about him that very first day in my kitchen because he spoke of them openly to me as if they were items of minor importance.
And yet, when he held my hand, he held it tightly. He clenched it so hard it hurt, and I could feel something like desperation in the way he used it to hold himself presently on earth. He called me beautiful and cosmic and enchanting. His manners were impeccable. When he sat down for dinner at my home on that very first night, he thanked me repeatedly. He complimented everything in my home, from the newly strung beaded curtains, to the mural I'd painted above me bed. He marveled at my garden as if he'd never seen one before, and then confided in me that he lived in a high rise and had in fact never participated up close in a garden of any kind except for on television. I'd thought he'd come to sleep with me, but he never even tried to kiss me until after I'd blatantly asked for it while I handed him a third glass of red wine left over from well before my grandfather Benjamin left. I loved that wine. I'd saved it for an unknown occasion, and prompting a gentle kiss from a boy that was rosey cheeked and unexpected was the perfect time.
We did eventually sleep together. It was late that night. He'd sobered again by then. It was well after I thought he'd leave, but he stayed. He stayed the entire evening, and when we did eventually make it into bed he was cordial about asking me to have sex with him. He was vocal about what he wanted, and then promptly submissive and appreciative and nothing even remotely to what I expected.
Afterwards, he was quick to put his clothes back on, like he was embarrassed to be found without them. I thought he'd then leave, but instead he settled himself back on the bed and curled up on his side, and it was then that I realized he intended to stay. I put on recently purchased pajamas with roses on them and then joined him.
He'd gotten quiet at that point. It came on rather suddenly, I thought. His face had got contemplative, and he was watching my every move with a silent interest. When he saw me watching from across the pillows, he spoke.
"You're really pretty," he said.
His voice sounded less stressed than I'd expected. It sounded kind, like being handed a pastry when you're starving. I felt like my body was melting.
"I think I'm in love with you," I stated.
The quiet expression on his face broke for a small smile to break through. It wasn't the wide one he normally sported when he laughed. It was more thoughtful. Behind the shine of his warm brown eyes, I could see his beautiful damaged mind spinning.
"Thank you," he said, softly.
I don't want to pretend things were picture perfect. Things with Riley just weren't like that, which is part of the draw. After lying in bed with me for a while longer, he got up and excused himself to the bathroom, and even though he didn't tell me what he was doing in there, I knew he crushed up a pill on the counter and then inhaled it. When he came back, his eyes were glossy and he wanted to bury his face into my shoulder, probably to hide it. I didn't mind. I didn't want to change him. Something of the mess was all too intriguing to me. Problems like the ones Riley carried in the cloud above his head were not things that could be fixed in a day.
Those problems certainly couldn't stop me from loving him.
With his eyes closed, and his face smooshed into my shoulders regardless, Riley mumbled, "I should have told him I wasn't going to come home tonight."
"The man you live with?" I questioned, imagining the man in the button up; the man Riley looked at with more stars in his eyes than he'd ever reserved for me in our short time together.
"Yes."
"Does the man know you're gay?" I asked him curiously.
He sat up and looked at me with his pin point pupils.
"I'm not gay," Riley scoffed.
"Okay," I agreed, because despite having had sex with him previously, I was not one to make assumptions about how anyone should want to define themselves.
"Okay?" He questioned, pin point eyes narrowed my direction. That couldn't hide the vulnerability in his expression.
I thought about how he'd been hurt. I thought about how much he likely wanted to hide.
"It's okay," I assured him.
He clenched my hand in his iron grip again, laid back into my shoulder, and repeated what he'd said before.
"Thank you, Basil."
I would certainly never change my name again if he kept saying it like that. I thought about how he'd said it when we were having sex, once fleetingly in his otherwise timid quiet. I thought about how I was in love with him and about how impossible it was to be in love with someone I'd only just met.
Riley fell asleep like that. I was uncomfortable where I was positioned, but I couldn't bring myself to move. I had moved away from him before on the day I first saw him. He looked less stressed now. He looked less afraid, but even in sleep his grip was crushing my fingers. I wouldn't be able to feel them for a while after I woke up.
My parents had gotten fake married on the day they first met. From all accounts, love did not take Florence very long. Daniel seemed to hold similar sentiments. Love was not elusive. It did not hide until arbitrary dates on a calendar told it to come out. Love simply came when convenient. Maybe it was genetic. Maybe I was somehow predisposed to loving in an immediate type of way.
Looking at him sleeping, I could just tell that I loved him so much that it physically ached.
And he didn't love me. He couldn't possibly. He didn't know me. Even if he did know me, I wasn't confident he could love me. Not the way I loved him anyways. Riley didn't even really love Percy, even though he'd been very clear in demeanor alone that he had thoughts about the other man. How could someone be capable of love when their sorrow was so evident? It was hidden behind quick smiles and powdery substance, but I'd seen him cry. I'd watched him numb it away entirely on every occasion. Beautiful Riley was in suffering, and understanding love was not a lesson made relatively available to the victims of the world like him.
I think maybe I loved him because something inside me just desperately thought it was needed.
Plus I found him infinitely fascinating. I liked knowing things. I liked watching things that didn't act how I expected. Watching him elicited the same feelings of euphoria I felt when I was engrossed in reading a book. He was certainly just as beautiful as any other handsome protagonist I'd found myself enraptured by.
Riley smelled like cigarettes. While I studied him in his sleep, I couldn't help but notice that. It was coming from his hair. It wasn't strong exactly. Just a gentle spice to his otherwise sweet wine perspiration.
He smelled like cigarettes, just like the one I'd used to kill the man who'd killed my Whaya. I couldn't help but let my mind wander there. It was only natural. When you've done something like that, I can assure you that you think about it. How could you not? It was only right. When you take someone's life away, you owe them a place in your thoughts at the very least. It was penance maybe.
And unfortunately, that meant I had to consider what it meant in regards to my darling Riley, who was innocently asleep next to someone I'm sure he couldn't have possibly considered to be a killer.
Regardless of the logic or reason, loving him came with complications. I was smart enough to know I couldn't ignore them. I was a liability and I'd isolated myself because I knew the risks were so great. I didn't have strong connections by design.
I'd taken the individual lives of three separate people. I'd been backed into a corner until it was the only possible way I thought I could get out. My freedom cost lives. God had killed Whaya, and I'd been forced to retaliate.
Riley shifted in his sleep. He moved just enough that his vice grip on my fingers twisted, which I found horribly painful. Now he was laying so that I could see his full face again, with puckered lips like a baby, and eyelashes fluttering slightly while he dreamed.
What if God was still watching? What if he knew I was currently enraptured by a beautiful man that I felt suddenly and strangely entrapped by? Was Riley in danger? Had simply bringing him here endangered him? It's not as if God could read minds. I'd just told Riley I was in love with him, but it wasn't like I'd known him really long. How would anyone possibly know that my heart now beat exclusively for him when yesterday it beat singularly on its own?
I suddenly felt angry. I felt viscous and protective. I wondered about all the ways that Riley could become a target because of me and I felt almost feral in how I somehow knew I'd react.
I would fight to the ends of the earth for him. I wouldn't stop at three people. I wasn't even sure I could bring myself to stop at all. I imagined burning cities. I imagined acts of violence far beyond anything I'd ever previously thought my own mind could muster.
Whaya said I could see the future coming if I just bothered to look. She said we were all unconsciously evaluating the world around us from the time we were born, listening for signs and signals of change or danger so that we could predict when we'd need to act. That was just psychologically, but even spiritually we could listen for the evidence in the energy around us to envision when the world might spiral out away from what we'd otherwise expect.
I could see this. I could see all the possibilities and all the outcomes. I could see them barreling towards me like a freight train and they were ever so frightening.
I could not let anything happen to my Riley.
On the other hand, I could not control him. He was a tidal wave. I could see that too, and nobody in their right mind would ever consider trying to put a leash on a tidal wave.
I looked at his sleeping face that I was so insanely and stupidly in love with and knew that I would die for him. Then I felt a tear slide down my face, warm and wet and so unexpected.
I wanted to tell my mom about him. I wanted to show Florence the boy that was making my heart flutter. I'd want to hear her slight disapproval at the fact that he was both metaphorically a tidal wave and factually addicted to pain pills. I wanted to see her resigned smile at the fact that he was everything I didn't know I wanted.
I had no idea how much I'd want him until he was standing there in front of me doing nothing more than existing. I thought about God again. I thought about another type of God in the Christian sense. I thought about the danger. I thought about how stressed I suddenly was with the idea that he was so completely out of my control. I thought about how loving someone would open me up to Roy Barkers danger again.
He was going to leave in the middle of the night after I fell asleep. I had no idea where he went. The next time we'd speak, days later, I'd tell him that I loved him again and he'd tell me that he wasn't the type of person I should be falling in love with. We'd sleep together again. He'd tell me I was beautiful and perfect and that my sights should be set higher than him. He never lied. He never promised exclusivity or a relationship of any kind. He kept calling me anyways. He talked to me as if nobody had ever let him talk before. He told me about his sister. He told me how incredible she was. He told me he didn't actually speak to her all that much anymore. He told me he was tired every day. He told me nobody had ever cooked for him the way I did. He told me that he remembered me talking about my mom. He asked me if I missed her and then told me he missed his mom too. Then he cried. She was alive. He really just missed the idea of her, and everything she could have been. He told me that something about my home made him feel safe. I told him that every time I saw him, I felt like our souls touched, like the world brought him to me. Something felt lighter and righter and altogether balanced in a way the entire universe had probably never seen before. I told him to remember that he was enough exactly as he was. He told me nobody else in the world was like me, and he said it like it was a compliment. He said it in a way that made me believe it more than I ever had before.
I decided through a metric designed completely in my own madness that this silly man with beautiful brown pin point eyes was somehow going to be completely worth it.